In biological laboratories, in particular in the laboratories of pathological institutes of universities or hospitals, biological samples, e.g., tissue samples obtained by biopsy, are very often stored as tissue pieces in cassettes or as thin sections on glass slides. A selection of such cassettes and glass slides is offered, for example, by THERMO SHANDON. These cassettes typically comprise a flat, cuboid sample cage having vertical closed lateral walls and a lower support surface pierced in a lattice. The upper storage surface is typically provided by a hinged cover having a snap closure, which is connected via a joint to the sample cage and is also pierced in a lattice. These samples are normally embedded, in paraffin, for example (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,665,398, U.S. Pat. No. 5,968,436, or DE 43 06 310 A1) and stored at room temperature, in the refrigerator (at approximately +4° C.), in the deep freeze (at approximately −18° C.), at lower temperature in an environment of solid CO2 (at approximately −80° C.), or at extremely low temperature in liquid nitrogen (at approximately −196° C.). A very large number of such samples, which may reach the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions, complicates finding a specific sample. This finding becomes more and more difficult with decreasing storage temperature. The targeted removal of precisely one single sample from a liquid nitrogen container is typically not possible. Normally, a container that contains many samples must be drawn from the nitrogen tank so that the desired sample may be selected. This is a time-consuming process in which the integrity and quality of the other samples which are not selected is also put into play to a greater or lesser degree.
The joint storage of samples typically does not represent a problem for the questions of pathology, contamination of neighboring samples by “carryover” may generally be neglected. A selection of containers for storing and providing such cassettes and glass slides (in particular at room temperature, see also EP 1 148 372 A2) is also offered by THERMO SHANDON. Laboratories of universities and the pharmaceutical industry, which are concerned with protein studies on or in frozen samples, have entirely different requirements in this context.
In pharmaceutical research, chemical or biochemical compounds are routinely tested for their potential pharmaceutical activity. For this purpose, a large number of samples must be provided within a very brief time. In laboratories of pharmaceutical research, microtubes are therefore used, which contain a sufficient quantity of a specific substance. In order to be able to handle the enormous numbers of such microtubes as economically as possible, they are packed in “microtube cluster racks”. For robotic handling, those racks, which have a footprint corresponding to the footprint of a microplate according to the SBS standard (SBS=standard for biomolecular screening), which is thus often referred to as the “SBS footprint”, are especially preferred. In the meantime, this standard has been normalized by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) as ANSI/SBS 1-2004. Microtube cluster racks having 96 or 384 microtubes are known, for example, under the trade name REMP® Tube Technology™.
Thin sections of fixed samples, embedded in paraffin, for example, are routinely applied to glass slides and evaluated using light microscopy in pathology. Following Table 1 gives an overview of the most common glass slides and dimensions:
TABLE 1TypeInch: 1 × inchesMetric: 25 × 75 mmDimensionsLength × width76.2 mm × 25.4 mm (±0.5 mm)75 mm × 25 mm (±0.5 mm)(tolerances)Thickness“standard”1.02 mm (±0.05 mm)1.02 mm (±0.05 mm)Handling“thick”1.2 mm (±0.1 mm)cornerssharp, beveledsharp, roundededgessharp, beveledsharpsurfacesblank, sandblasted,blank, sandblasted,painted on one or both sidespainted on one or both sides(Table according to: Schermer, M. J.: Confocal scanning microscopy in microarray detection, in “DNA Microarrays, A practical approach”; Mark Schena (ed.), Oxford University Press 1999, 17-42)
The current applicant distributes microtube cluster racks having 96 or 384 microtubes under the trade name REMP® Tube Technology™. These differ from the racks and microtubes from the other prior art substantially in that the sample tubes are provided by situating at least two racks one on top of another and sample tubes are pushed from the upper rack using a manipulator into correspondingly positioned receptacle cavities of the lower rack. Vice versa, this transfer process may also be performed by pushing sample tubes using a manipulator from the lower rack into correspondingly positioned receptacle cavities of the upper rack (see, for example, EP 0 904 841 B1 or U.S. Pat. No. 6,827,907 B2).